O Come and Mourn with Me

Yesterday was a day of remembrance for the death of Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord. Today is a day of remembering that death and mourning. As a thought on the crucifixion John Calvin wrote in this Institutes of the Christian Religion:

In order to remove our condemnation it was not enough for him to endure just any kind of death. To obtain our ransom, it was essential to choose a type of death in which he could deliver us, both by giving himself up to condemnation and also undertaking our expiation. If he had been mown down by assassins or killed in a rebellion, there could have been no satisfaction. But when he stands as a criminal at the bar and witnesses are brought to give evidence against him and the judge condemns him to death, we see him taking on the character of an offender. Here we must refer to two things which had been foretold by the prophets, and serve admirably to confirm our faith. When we read that Christ was led away from the judgment seat to execution, and was crucified between thieves, we have a fulfilment of the prophecy '[he] was numbered with the transgressors' (Isa. 53:12; Mark 15:20,27). Why did it have to be? So that he might bear the character of a sinner, not of a just or innocent person, in that he died on account of sin. On the other hand, we read that he was acquitted by the same lips that condemned him, because Pilate was forced to bear public testimony to his innocence. This reminds us of the Psalmist: 'I am forced to restore what I did not steal' (Ps. 69:4). So we see Christ taking on the character of a sinner and a criminal, while at the same time his innocence shines out, and it becomes obvious that he is suffering for another's crime and not his own. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, being ranked among criminals by the formal sentence of the judge, when he affirms that he can find no cause of death in him (John 18:38). Our acquittal lies in this: that the guilt which made us liable to punishment was transferred to the head of the Son of God. It is really important to remember that he has taken our place, so that we may not spend all our lives in trepidation and anxiety, as if the punishment we deserve, but which the Son of God took to himself, was still hanging over us.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

O Come and Mourn with Me

by Frederick Faber (1849)

O come and mourn with me awhile;

And tarry here the cross beside;

O come, together let us mourn;

Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

Have we no tears to shed for Him,

While soldiers scoff and foes deride?

Ah! look how patiently He hangs;

Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

How fast His hands and feet are nailed;

His blessed tongue with thirst is tied,

His failing eyes are blind with blood:

Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

His mother cannot reach His face;

She stands in helplessness beside;

Her heart is martyred with her Son’s:

Jesus, our Lord, is Crucified.

Seven times He spoke, seven words of love;

And all three hours His silence cried

For mercy on the souls of men;

Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

Come, let us stand beneath the cross;

So may the blood from out His side

Fall gently on us drop by drop;

Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

O break, O break, hard heart of mine!

Thy weak self-love and guilty pride

His Pilate and His Judas were:

Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

A broken heart, a fount of tears,

Ask, and they will not be denied;

A broken heart love’s cradle is:

Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

O love of God! O sin of man!

In this dread act Your strength is tried;

And victory remains with love;

For Thou our Lord, art crucified!

No Distinctions

We were all equally dead and we are now all equally alive. Sometimes what we see is that the outplaying of our being dead is greater than others and the outplaying of our being alive is greater than others.
Example:

A child is born into a Christian family and hears the gospel while growing up. He is reborn at an early age and grows up in the Spirit of the Lord for his whole life; he leads Bible studies, prays and studies everyday, witnesses to everyone he knows and meets, and later plants and pastors a church.

Down the road is a man who has served time in jail for murder, raped women, done drugs, sold drugs, curses everyday, and can’t get through the day without getting drunk first. This man is reborn through Christ Jesus, stops living the life he is living; he begins going to church, reading and studying Scripture, prays everyday, witnesses to everyone he knows and meets, and later plants and pastors a church.

Was the second man more dead than the first? Did the second man become more alive than the first? No. I cannot think of any instance where someone in a grave is more dead than the guy a plot over. We were all equally spiritually dead and we are all equally spiritually alive.

Now, from our perspective we see a greater change in actions from the second man than the first, but, the change in a person’s heart from dead to alive is the same. There is no in-between dead and alive… there is either dead or alive. You are either dead in sin or alive in Christ.

There is no such thing as a boring testimony. If you have bee reborn in the Spirit, then your spiritual self has gone from death to life: just as Christ died physically and rose from the dead to life physically, so have you been raised from the dead.

God takes dead people and makes them alive. Nothing we do or say can in any way affect our deadness or aliveness, only God can do this. This is why all the glory is God's and none of it is ours.

Hope from History (via the Trinity Law School blog)

Just thought I'd share a very cool post by Donald McConnell over at the Trinity Law School blog (Dean McConnell is also writing for the Christian Theology team blog). He opens with

Do not be discouraged.

In the fight to reform America and her laws, it could be easy to become discouraged. More and more people seem to be rejecting the very idea that moral truth exists, can be known, and should be the spirit behind all human laws.

But things have been as bad or worse at other times in history.

and then continues to lay out a few examples. It's a great reminder to not get too caught up in the moment but to instead understand that God can work even through times such as these that we find ourselves in now.